Cook County prosecutors on Saturday said that numerous witnesses and videos from surveillance cameras in the area helped identify a 17-year-old boy in the fatal shooting of retired CPD officer Larry Neuman in Garfield Park.
Marquan Jones, the teen, was seen fleeing through an alley after the shooting by at least two witnesses, authorities told a Cook County judge during a detention hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
Police arrested Jones in the 2400 block of East 75th Street on Thursday. In addition to two separate counts of first-degree murder, the teen was also charged with a single count of armed robbery in connection with a robbery that occurred in November 2023 in the Garfield Park neighborhood, according to police. Jones was charged as an adult and ordered to remain in juvenile detention by Judge Shauna Boliker.
A second teen, 16-year-old Lazarious Watt, was charged as an adult for the murder of Neuman, police announced on Monday. A judge ordered Watt held pending trial this coming Tuesday.
Prosecutors said at Watt’s detention hearing that he was one of two teens who approached Neuman, 73, while he was paying a person for cutting his grass. A witness said Neuman reached for his own weapon and shot once at the pair as Watt took aim.
Neuman was shot in the 4300 block of West Monroe Street around 11:30 a.m. near his home on June 20. He was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital. The Cook County medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide, caused by multiple gunshot wounds.
Neuman had worked as an explosives technician with the police department, spending his entire career “safeguarding our city,” according to police Superintendent Larry Snelling. Snelling also said Neuman worked as a reverend in retirement and spoke out against violent crime.
ekane@chicagotribune.com
Tribune reporters Caroline Kubzansky and Rebecca Johnson contributed to this report.
